[T]he closest tie that binds men together is a shared experience of a common literary tradition. Men who eat the same kinds of food or wear the same styles of clothing or live in the same kinds of climate understand one another better than men who do not. But those who understand one another most fully are those who have read the same books.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, July 09, 2024
The Closest Tie
Moses Hadas, Old Wine, New Bottles: A Humanist Teacher at Work (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), p. 53: